Nativist Leader Cited For Indecent Exposure

March 13, 2008

David Holthouse

March has certainly come in like a lion for “Buffalo” Rick Galeener. It’s been a rip-roarin’ month so far for the professional singing cowboy-turned-co-founder of Riders United for a Sovereign America, or Riders USA, a Phoenix-based immigrant-bashing motorcycle gang.

Last week, Galeener was profiled in the new issue of the Intelligence Report as one of the 20 most active militant nativists in the country. Then, earlier this week, he was quoted in a National Public Radio report talking trash about Salvador Reza, a Phoenix labor organizer and U.S. Air Force veteran who operates the Macehualli Work Center, a day labor facility in Phoenix outside of which Galeener and other nativists have protested almost every day this year.

The March 11 NPR piece, though, failed to note that three days before it aired, Galeener was cited by a Phoenix police officer for exposing his penis to a Hispanic woman and her 2-year-old son outside the Macehualli center.

As first reported in the Phoenix New Times, Galeener allegedly exposed himself to Paulita Cortes, a Phoenix resident who has lived near the work center for nine years. Cortes said that Galeener in the past has called her a wetback and told her to go back to Mexico.

After Cortes complained to police, Galeener was cited for indecent exposure, a class 1 misdemeanor, which carries a potential fine of $2,500 and is punishable by up to six months in jail. Galeener told the investigating officer that he was merely urinating in a plastic bottle.

"Ironically,” noted Phoenix New Times blogger Stephen Lemons, “there's a McDonald's about a block up the road….[but] he may not have wanted to use the McDonald's, as it's owned by Keenan Strand, a vocal opponent of the protesters and a supporter of the work center.”

Plus, no one’s ever accused Galeener of being a whiz. Just taking one.